The Rhodes We Travelled in the Middle East

It has not been a good week for President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, Ben Rhodes. The guy responsible for spinning the President’s foreign policy got spun pretty bad himself in a very poorly received profile in the New York Times Magazine. Inside the Washington, D.C. beltway the portrait has lit a fire under the “Blob,” as Rhodes calls the community of foreign policy organizations and reporters, both because of the un-truths of the author David Samuels, and because of the condescendingquotes from Rhodes. For us, many of the core takeaways from Rhodes’ approach to foreign policy reminded us of the painful moments in last month’s lengthy profile of President Obama himself. It’s clear that Rhodes – like his boss – has adopted the “we can’t fix it” approach to the Middle East, and have proceeded to cast their approach as a correction from the over exuberance of President Bush’s Iraq war. Even though there is not a grand solution for stabilizing the Middle East, we just wish the Obama Administration would have tried.